07 Sep
  • By Eelco Lodewijks
  • / Blog

EXPONENTIAL CHANGE – WOW

Few realise how fast our world is changing, but it is “critical” that you understand this.  To put the “sheer power” of exponentially accelerating change in perspective, let us use an illustration.  We can all imagine how far “30 steps” would take us.  Now try to imagine how far “30 exponential steps” would take you, where each step you take is twice as big as the previous step, namely 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 paces and so on.  By the time you complete the 30th step you will have taken more than a billion paces and have circumnavigated the world about 20 times, or 25 times if your steps are 1 metre long.

Now apply this “incremental steps” concept to annual leaps in technology, that are constantly becoming bigger and happening faster, as performance efficiencies and/or capacities tend to double every two years.  If our innovation and knowledge is doubling every 2 years, think where we will be in 15 years.  

To give you some sense of just how fast, it is estimated and perfectly likely that we will see more change in the next 20 years, than we saw in the past 2 000 years.  Both humans and businesses will increasingly struggle to keep up with accelerating change.  I cannot stress enough how quickly all this change is going to be upon us and how radical it will be.

In 2018, the Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine department estimated that medical knowledge was doubling every 75 days.  If that is correct, it equates to a 30+ fold increase in a year.  There is no way we can assimilate such virtually unlimited blocks of knowledge in the future, without the aid of Smart Systems that give us what we need, when we need it.

For more on this, read the first two chapters of my book at https://technologytsunamialert.com/

Please comment or ask questions.  We would love to hear from you.

My book Technology Tsunami Alert will be launched mid-2020. 

Please also read the Gold/Silver and Investment chapters on my EelcoGold website.

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